Day 11 – Deep in the bowels of the earth

Woke up still in this forsaken mine, but we knew we must be near the lowest level 'cos there were literal lava rivers and shit, wtf.

Me and Im knew that this was it, we knew whatever was causing the iron crisis was here- i don't normally get like, sentimental, but we both kinda new this was a now or never moment - our whole plan hinged on this. And yeah, there was this room, with this priest of Cyric, and all these skeletons, and kobolds with flaming arrows, in this tight claustrophobic space, hardly any room to move. It was a miracle me and Imoen survived. We had a little bit of help from this elven “mage” called Xan, though he couldn’t actually cast any spells – not actually sure how he survived the battle. He was a prisoner of the cleric or something, some failed adventurer, just talking to him drained, like, the will to live.

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Part 1 of the battle

The fight was dummy hard, I think me an Imoen drank all our healing potions, and this potion of speed which was a lifesaver – Imoen she moved so quick, we gots to get more of these. Absolutely savage – she hacked the priest up with her shortword.

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aftermath, with picture of sad sack elf

Turns out that yep, just as expected, the cleric was poisoning the iron (duh), but what was more exciting, he had a whole chest full of spell scrolls and magic items: magic boots, magic rings, magic everything. And did I mention the spell scrolls?

He also had two letters detailing what was going on with the iron (I read them but they were pretty boring), and with him dead that should be enough to make us heroes or whatever. We left Xan in the mine, I didn’t want a spare wheel on the journey – this is me and Imoen all the way through to the end. He was literally so miserable, who has time for babysitting a depressed elf?

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Lead 1: a contact in beregost called Tranzig

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Lead 2: A plot involving some mercenary companies to disrupt other sources of iron into the region.

So we walked all the way out of the mine, up through the levels like a pair of chumps - magical teleportation when? There were an awful lot of kobold bodies to step over. i mean a lot. I remember thinking, did me and Imoen really kill all these? It seems perverse almost. Such slaughter. How are we so good at killing things?

Yah, so we reported our success, flashed the letters around Nashkel and the mayor was ecstatic. Like so pleased. These people really do love iron ore (sad really). He paid us 900 gold pieces for all our VERY HARD work, which objectively is a lot, but considering the epic amount of walking down mine shafts, not to mention the gratuitous amount of killing involved seemed pretty cheap. I felt genuinely angry. It’s hard to control sometimes, ever since I left candlekeep I’ve been struggling with it. But hey ho, I’m fucking rich now which makes anything good and everything better xd.

We retired to the inn to spend some of our new cash, and also to get clean, eww, I realised I absolutely stink, and so does imoen, too long in the grotty mine, not to mention all the dried blood in my clothes. Everyone in the tavern was really pleased to see us and imoen drank too much in the common room before we crashed out. Thank fuck for soft beds and clean sheets.